comment-record

a silly little language

• building it
• using it
• writing it
• extending it

building it

cr is built with Rust. once you have Rust installed, navigate to the comment-record directory and run:

cargo build

this puts the executable in the target/debug directory. You can also just run it directly with:

cargo run

using it

write some code in a file, save it as (e.g.) test.cr and then run:

cargo run test.cr

if the last statement of the file is a value, it is printed.

writing it

cr allows two statement types: a type definition and a value definition. cr has a simple data model, with numbers, text, structs, and comment types.

# this is a comment

# this is a number
number = 42;

# this is text
text = "foobar";

# this is an anonymous struct
object = {
	name: "My Great Object",
	age: 42,
};

comments can be attached to struct & field types and instances. they flow down from types to instances.

# struct definition
struct MyStruct {
	# field definition
	my_field: Number,
};

# struct instance
value = MyStruct {
	# field instance
	my_field: 42,
};

comments can be incorporated by reference.

# Here is a lengthy comment describing some important things
# that we might want to share among several items.
parent = {};

#! parent
child = {};

comments can be inspected at run time, which we use to implement an idiomatic version of hello world.

# hello, world!
x = {};

result = x!!;

any fields listed in the comments are extracted for use.

# NAME: Bort
x = {};

result = "We need more " + x!NAME + " license plates in the gift shop.";

extending it

if we added procedures, it would open some interesting avenues to explore around how comments would flow alongside the data they are connected to.